A blog as expression of a perspective and take on international issues, most specially human rights, conflict situation and other topics worthy of interest and action.
Onada expansiva aims to be a catalyst for internationalist discussion on current issues with our own research and contributions from any other source.
Onada expansiva will be publishing in Catalan, English, Spanish and French.You can also follow us at @OnadaExpansiva

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Monday, June 29, 2015

For some time structural adjustments including massive cuts to state-funded activities such as education and health or the privatization of public enterprises and services seemed something limited to the periphery, the so-called South be it Latin America, Africa or Asia . However, as ultimate evidence of the global nature of capitalism the current recession has brought to our very shores and homes the same kind of rigid policy formulas, dictated by the very same unelected financial institutions. In this article, appeared in Red Pepper in June 2015 Thomas McDonagh looks at the parallelisms between Bolivia´s Water war and the ongoing campaign in Ireland against the privatization of water. As usual, we have added some pictures, hyperlinks and context info at the end.

Water protesters in Ireland. Photo: William Murphy, Flickr

From Ireland to Bolivia, there’s something in the water Thomas McDonagh Red Pepper

For months people across Ireland have been protesting against the introduction of charges for domestic water – which, until the first wave of bills arrived in April, had been paid for through direct taxation. Opposition to the charges peaked on 1 November, when more than 150,000 people attended 90 different protests across the country, building on months of local campaigning. Equally spectacularly, just weeks earlier almost 100,000 people took to the streets of Dublin to express their anger at a reform that was agreed as part of the 2010 bailout brokered by the Irish government with the European Union and International Monetary Fund. The campaign still has considerable momentum and may well get a new lease of life as payment becomes a pressing issue.

Background During five weeks between mid-June through July 2014, armed gunmen who in most cases claimed to be part of the Somalia-based armed Islamist group Al-Shabaab, attacked a passenger bus and at least eight villages in the Kenyan coastal counties of Lamu and Tana River. The attackers killed 87 people including four security officers, and destroyed approximately 30 buildings and 50 vehicles. Kenyan security forces were slow to respond to the attacks, leaving villages unprotected and when they eventually responded, their actions were of ten discriminatory, beating, arbitrarily detaining and stealing personal property from Muslim and ethnic Somalis in the two counties. A year later, despite numerous law enforcement operations along the coast, hundreds have been arrested and mistreated, only to have charges dropped for lack of evidence and no one has been held responsible for the attacks.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

We reproduce a short piece by Helen Epstein (author of "The invisible Cure" on the fight against AIDS in Africa) in the New York Review of Books reviewing Adam Branch and Zachariah Mampilly’s Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change and simultaneously addressing the latest episodes of social and political unrest in the African continent (notably Burundi but also Burkina and the DRC with mentions to Senegal and Uganda) within a larger framework of Western support to autocratic and seemingly perpetual regimes in the region.A backing rooted in the adjustment programs dictated by the IMF and World Bank and renewed with the so-called War on Terror. We have added hyperlinks and some context material at the end.

Poor Burundi. Landlocked, tiny, and known mainly for ethnic conflict,
it was for years the subject of one of the most intense international
peace-building efforts in history. By the time the Arusha Peace Agreement was finally signed in 2003, 300,000 Burundians had died in a
civil war rivaling in ferocity that of its neighbor Rwanda. Huge sums
had been invested in grassroots workshops, high-level meetings and
summits to end the fighting. According to Burundi specialist Peter Uvin,
taxi drivers in the capital Bujumbura joke that the per diems received
during these protracted negotiations built the poshest neighborhood in
the city. Now, a decade after the peace process came to what seemed a
successful conclusion, and despite billions of dollars in humanitarian
aid, the country appears to be falling apart again.

Monday, June 1, 2015

We have added a short talk by Slavoj Žižek in the videos section where the Slovenian philosopher develops the case against political correctness, which he considers risks becoming in an expression of Totalitarianism. Along the way, he addresses other recurrent topics in his work such as racism, cultural differences and other forms of social domination disguised as "cultural sensitivity". The video was made available by Big Think and you might find the transcript here.